Differences in business models and their originality

The design concepts of digitalization, such as interoperability, decentralisation, and real-time

capabilities, have had a profound impact on how companies plan the presentation of new products and
how they manage their supply chains. (Cusumano et al., 2016; Jiang et al., 2016). To some extent, the
advent and widespread adoption of digitalization-related business model innovations like crowd-
sourced innovation (CSI), manufacturing as a service (MaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS) (kerman et
al., 2018; Müller et al., 2018a) can be seen as a chance for businesses to improve their economic and
social sustainability (Evans et al., 2017).

Lessening of Carbon Dioxide and Other Harmful Gas Emissions

More than forty percent of all greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to industrial pollution, according
to studies (EPA, 2019). Researchers concluded that digitalization's impact on lowering carbon emissions
was quite minor (Ford and Despeisse, 2016; Kamble et al., 2018). The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
and AI-based manufacturing, for instance, raise productivity, adaptability, and waste reduction, while
simultaneously decreasing the carbon emission index per product (Jin et al., 2017). To further contribute
to environmental and social sustainability, new digital business models present opportunities for
businesses, such as the transition from mass production to mass customization and even product
individualization, which can optimise the consumer market and contribute to the materialisation of a
low-carbon future (Müller et al., 2018b, c) (Cai et al., 2019).

Enhanced Profitability for Businesses

Digitalization's implications for corporations' bottom lines have been extensively recognised in recent
years (Hofmann and Rüsch, 2017; Kiel et al., 2017; Müller et al., 2018a). Numerous economic
sustainability opportunities have been linked to the implementation of Digitalization technology trends
like IIoT, additive manufacturing, the cloud, and data analytics, as well as the development of
Digitalization design principles like smart manufacturing and product personalization (Dalenogare et al.,
2018; Kamble et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2016): I material flow optimization; (ii) improved time to market
of products; and (iii) greater product customization. According to research, the fundamentals of
digitalization include technology trends and design, and it has been embraced as a business ecosystem,
which means that it has the potential to significantly contribute to the world's long-term economic
sustainability (Jabbour et al., 2018a; Tseng et al., 2018a,b). It does not seem like digitalization will be a
job killer, but rather a job producer. This is according to recent research (Frey and Osborne, 2017).
Despite the fact that digitalization has helped eliminate a lot of low-skilled employment, it has also
created a huge number of new positions in adjacent fields (Brougham and Haar, 2018). Developing
nations in particular would benefit greatly from the opportunities presented by digitalization as it would
let them skip over their unfinished industrialization and hasten the pace of economic transformation
(Ghobakhloo and Fathi, 2019). The same holds true for the sustainable operations management that has
emerged from the widespread use of digital technology (Stahel, 2016; Tseng et al., 2018a,b). Spreading
Digitalization technologies will provide excellent potential for numerous facets of sustainable economic
growth since their effects go beyond supply chain or production borders and affect distribution
networks and consumer markets (Cezarino et al., 2019; Lin et al., 2018).

Environmentally responsible use of energy and materials

Sustainable energy and resource transformation, made possible through digital transformation, are key
to achieving environmental sustainability (Beier et al., 2017). The pace and nature of digitalization's
impact on production, commerce, consumption, and daily life are unprecedented in human history. The
increasing use of IDOT, such as wireless networks and blockchain technologies, has led to exciting new
possibilities for the digitalization of energy systems and the advancement of the energy industry as a
whole (Huang et al., 2017). As one example of digitization's accepted ramifications, smart grids facilitate
the integration of power networks with renewable energy sources (Batista et al., 2017; Faheem et al.,
2018). Digitalization has wider ramifications for sustainability than just energy efficiency. Smarter
material planning and allocation systems or intelligent materials have contributed significantly to
material efficiency and saving, paving the way for economic sustainability (Jose and Ramakrishna, 2018;
Kumar, 2018). This has been made possible by the rise of more efficient production systems and the
emergence of advanced digital manufacturing technologies (such as CPPS, additive manufacturing, and
intelligent robotics) (Kiel et al., 2017). Decentralization, horizontal/vertical integration, interoperability,
and real-time capability of Digitalization have numerous time efficiency implications, for example in
terms of manufacturing cycle time or procurement lead time efficiency, which are all extremely valuable
resources in the manufacturing economics (Ardito et al., 2019; Dalenogare et al., 2018).